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Visiting the homeless shelter for the 4th time has become something that I really enjoy. I am beginning to make more bonds with the people there and I am genuinely becoming friends with a lot of the people that are there. My last visit I got to help make more food and serve it on the line. Even though the quality of the product of food we are using is really low, they are still good meals and I make it a point to eat the same meal that we are serving as my lunch. It lets me be in their shoes for a little bit. Working on the line, I snuck some people more than one piece of meat when they were allowed to come back for seconds. I wasn’t sure if that was ok to do but we had a lot of food and enough for more people to come and eat some. I was really excited that the local Harris Teeter donated a bunch of desserts to the shelter; there was cheesecake, red velvet cake, cookies, and a bunch of other stuff. Only thing that I noticed that I found was a little disturbing was that the expiration dates were from awhile back. I did eat the cheesecake and it tasted fine to me but that was probably why the desserts were donated, because they were old and they were just going to throw them out. Even if the desserts were going bad, having dessert for lunch made a lot of the homeless men happy. Even I was excited to be serving desserts.
Overall this opportunity has been a lot of fun. I am getting down to my final hours and I am really contemplating if I should just keep coming till I get into labs. I won’t be able to help once I’m in labs because I will be in class at the time I go into volunteer.

The author clearly presents all three sides of the healthcare issue. He has three different sources each separately supporting one side of the healthcare issue. All of which have supporting details that display the reasoning for choosing the side that they support. The author has Merrill Matthews Jr. who believes that the healthcare system may not improve if we copy how Canada runs things. Then there is Kip Sullivan’s point of view, he believes that “the single payer system is the best. He wants to reform health care so that all the insurance companies will be replaced by government and it should be able to adjust the prices charged by providers and drug companies”. Lastly we hear about Jonathan Oberlander who takes the neutral standpoint on this argument, he believes that insurers mess with physicians’ work and don’t allow the doctors do their jobs. He also believes that single-payer healthcare system cannot be established because of political oppositions. The author does outline and answer all the questions that he was suppose to address in his paper. He even states when he believes that a source has given sufficient information to support their side of the argument. Saying that they pertained to ethos, pathos, and logos.
This paper gave me a little more of a perspective on healthcare. I know in these days hearing about healthcare really brings up a lot of debate, and I think that the author did a good job not showing his point of view in the paper. He did a good job stating all the different sides without a bias lean. I know that I am tired of hearing about healthcare because it is in the news so much. In reading this paper I have gained some details about our health care issues and have a better idea of what side I am for.

This excerpt makes me think about homeless people. A lot of the lines seem to be pertaining to a homeless person, like the lines that talk about pushing a shopping cart up a ramp in a park. That visual places the image of a homeless person in my head. The poem also goes on to talk about having no sink, no water, and no heat, which definitely provides a homeless atmosphere. It seems as though in the speaker of the poem realizes that he or she has become homeless when they see their reflection. It seems as though homelessness is something that can occur to anyone and it just hits them one day.

Since I have been helping out at the homeless shelter I have realized that anyone can become homeless at any time. I have heard stories of very successful people having one incident in their lives change them completely. One story in particular was about a web page designer who’s family was killed and it hurt him so much that he turned to drugs. The drugs took over his life and consumed everything and he was left with no money and couldn’t afford to live in his home.
I have begun to look at homelessness in a new light. I use to think that it was only the older men who never went to college and never really had a life. There’s a lot more to it than that, a lot of the homeless men today served in war for our country and can no longer take care of themselves. Some people are even young and just need a way to be helped back on their feet. I believe that the homeless can be helped it just takes some motivation to get them on the right track with their lives.

Going to volunteer at the homeless shelter has been a lot of fun. I am meeting a lot of new people and already making some good friends. Walking there seems to be the only problems I encounter but it is worth it because I am having a lot of fun. All of the men there are very respectful and really appreciate what I am doing for them. The first day I went to volunteer a bunch of the men talked to me and thanked me for the food and were very kind. I was able to crack some jokes with them and it was a lot of fun. Going there I am like the only white girl which is pretty interesting. I have no problems with this though because I easily get along. They play different music than I’m use to while we are working in the kitchen and they are always asking me if I know any of the songs. I find it kind of interesting being the minority, I am not afraid mainly because I’m use to always hanging out with guys.

I am really excited to keep going and volunteering. People there are already beginning to remember my name and I feel really good going and helping out. I may try to keep going after my hours are up because I am really enjoying this experience. Glenn is a Johnson & Wales student I met there who is doing the shelter as his work study and hanging out with him has been a lot of fun. We are both becoming good friends and I don’t have to worry about leaving the shelter and walking back by myself because he walks with me. He is a really tall black guy and walking with him around this area makes me feel safer. One thing that really surprised me was that one of the homeless men helping out in the kitchen asked me what my 5 mother sauces were, and I was surprised to learn that he knows a lot about culinary.

Dalton brought up a lot of good points in his entry. A bunch of which I found very interesting and agreed with. He talked about how in our world we have this thing he likes to call the “best black syndrome” this is where people have the tendency to judge people solely on their color. For instance, Tiger woods being known as the “best black” golfer. We don’t really refer to him as the best golfer, we say he’s the best black one. Dalton gave another example about a kid named Steven Carter who earned the second highest score on his high school National Merit Scholarship qualifying test. He was recognized as “the best Black” around but not seen as one of the best students. Dalton also brought up more points about black people in specific. Saying how we tend to praise black people when they are a good speaker, but shouldn’t everyone be like that. It was also interesting to read how we don’t only just do this for black people. Two examples that Dalton said that really stood out to me are when he said that people are surprised every time they see a good white man who can play basketball above the rim. Another example is that Puerto Ricans are also surprised to discover that some “Americans” can salsa really well. All of this makes you think that individuals are judged on their own personal merit. I think not only does this go along with different ethnicities but also between men and women. I know that when I go into a kitchen, guys will say “ohh your going to be working in here?” In the tone of “I cant believe you think you can work in here.” They are eventually truly surprised at how well I can keep up and help run things in the kitchen. This excerpt really got me thinking about how people are easily judged all around the world, based on where they are from, and what they look like.

The author does show three different positions in their paper. Robert E. Rector believed that abstinence only sex education was the best education for teenagers. National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) believes that, “teaching students about birth control and protection provides students with essential information about their health and sexuality [and] abstinence-only sexuality education fails to provide adolescents with the information they need to protect their health and well-being” Del Stover, a senior editor of American School Board Journal was somewhere in the middle of these two. This was the more neutral perspective. I believe that the author did provide good evidence from each source; however I found this paper really boring and hard to read. I felt like there should have been more facts presented that would have some more shock value on the reader. However the author does introduce the topic well and gives three different viewpoints on this topic. This is exactly what he/she is supposed to do for this paper. I felt like this paper did adequately use other viewpoints however, I feel like there is no original thought it’s just like regurgitation of a bunch of facts said by other people. I honestly had a hard time reading this paper because I have such a strong bias against teaching abstinence only sex education. I feel as though it’s good to put that option out there but they should also know about how to handle situations if things get too hot and heavy and you don’t stop yourself from not having sex. I don’t feel like the author put enough info to support abstinence only sex education and I feel like the last view point, the neutral one, only really talked about funding for these programs. I thought it was going to talk about a more of having both abstinence and protective sex combined.

In Wachtel’s entry he proves a lot of valid points that are concerns with American’s today and the word “racist”. It seems as though certain situations in our daily lives are being interpreted as being racist even though the intentions may not be at all. One example he gave was that a white person may cross the street to avoid a group of black men that are walking toward him/her. This situation reminds me a lot of when my roommate and I are walking around. Because of the area that we are in it isn’t really safe to be walking around as two little “white girls” past a group of black men. Sometimes we do cross the street, and even in those instances they will yell across to us and say stuff to us. We don’t always cross the street we don’t run from every black person we see, we just are use to being followed by black men and would just rather try to skip going through the whole ordeal of getting hit on and followed. Neither of us have problems with black people, I have a lot of black friends, and black cousins, however people take us crossing the street to get away from black people as being racist. Fact is if there were creepy white people we would cross the street too.

One quote that I found really interesting was when Wachtel was finding the definition of racism. He said, several blacks claimed that they cannot be racist “by definition” because they believed that the word racism means discrimination by the majority against an oppressed minority. White people however believe that racism is a discrimination against a certain race. Its this difference in ideas that is really scary to think about because if as a “United” Nation, we can’t even agree on what is or what isn’t racism then we have overused the words racism and racist to the point where we are no longer able to overcome racial divisions.

Another point that Wachtel brought up was that using the word racist really stops all communication between people. If there are some issues of disagreement on a topic, calling someone a racist ceases the conversation and the issue is not resolved.

There has also become a fear in white people when they talk to black people, they feel like they have to chose their words carefully so that they don’t offend or make the black person think they are a racist.